This sour and humorless GQ piece can't hide the fascinating quality of an eccentric group's spoofy effort to create a non-PC libertarian utopia on the Croatian border. When the journalist can't think of any cogent criticism, she drips with contempt over the white-male aspect and whines about the boredom and discomfort of her trip. Throwing in a bit of Trump snark is obligatory, of course.

This attempt to create a modern Galt's Gulch doubtless is pretty nuts; its flaky youngsters, like residents of George Washington University and Burning Man East in South Dakota, will have a lot to learn about defensive borders for their little piece of paradise. Unlike the author, though, I find the underlying impulse refreshing.

If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I’ve been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common sense gun safety laws.

You're too modest, sir. You've seen us flourish, under your leadership. Respect for the Second Amendment has come to be taken seriously by the Supreme Court, during your tenure, and you've helped to ensure a similar court will endure for decades to come. We're on the cusp of seeing gun permits treated like, dare I say it, marriage licenses. All 50 states will now respect one issued by any of the 50 states.

And, of course, we've seen record levels of gun purchases during your tenure as well. You're passing on to the future an America that is not only more respectful of the civil right to keep and bear arms, but far better armed as well.

To think that's happened maugre your head, as Malory would put it. And you the President, and everything.

...and in fairness, it is something that was done even here in America. It was done by a Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, otherwise considered the greatest president of the modern age by the same people afraid that we'll start doing this sometime next month.

Not that I don't think it's hilarious that half of Detroit ballots (which went 95% for Clinton) can't be recounted under Michigan law, because the votes sent to the Secretary of State don't match the number of voters ostensibly signed into the poll books on election day, but I really can't understand how that law is supposed to work. It seems to freeze in place whatever overcounted vote was produced by the Detroit machine. How would anyone ever succeed in throwing out the votes that exceed the number legitimately signed into the poll books?

In many years of working the polls and serving as an election judge, I can remember exactly one instance in which my cast-ballot total differed from the poll-book total by exactly one vote. People, it is just not that hard when you're making an effort to be honest.

Josh, this administration has made a huge priority out of responding to online threats from jihadists. You have a whole set of people at the State Department; you have them at the Pentagon; you’ve got people who have gone after those who posted these messages and killed them in the Middle East.... You had an entire set of businesses up here on Connecticut Avenue for months getting direct death threats, and they said that nothing was done about them. Is it only a priority if these are jihadi threats? And is it not a priority for this administration if businesses and normal people are getting death threats and being terrorized for months with no action on the part of this administration? Help me understand the difference there.

Union leaders, too, I guess. Shall we assassinate the people making those death threats, like we do jihadis in Yemen?

Or is the point just to bend the whole Federal government toward going after the fringe political enemies of the administration's allies? That seems like a power that couldn't possibly be abused in, say, a month and a half. If you really think Trump is running a fascist movement, why would you be asking the administration to exert new power? Shouldn't you be arguing for it to accept binding handcuffs, which could only be a minor inconvenience in your last month or so, but that might hamper the incoming administration?

Donald Trump is at it again. A left-leaning friend contacted me earlier tonight to ask me to call my Senators to get them to stand up against Trump's "threatening" of an American citizen. This ended up in an unsatisfying discussion of whether or not what he said constituted a threat, or protected free speech. Here's what he wrote:

Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!... If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana. Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues

I don't see any "threat" here, nor even an "attack on a private citizen." To me, this looks like criticism of the job performance of a union leader and his leadership of his union. Should a President engage in debate with union leadership on the best way to keep American jobs? Well, yes, I would have to say. It would be great if we could have a committed public debate on that topic.

I would think most union leaders, even at the cost of being crosswise with so powerful a person as a President Elect, would be delighted at the chance to have that discussion. When the President Elect, or even the President, deigns to 'punch down,' it has the effect of elevating you to his platform. I'd take that all day if I could get it. But even leaving that aside, it would be great if we could just get our various political factions arguing about how to protect American jobs. That itself would be a great change for the better.

The alternative position comes from the claim, which could certainly be true, that the union leader who criticized Trump is getting death threats in the wake of this counter-criticism. On this view, Trump supporters are a kind of informal brownshirts who only wait for a hint from their leader to deploy violence against those who dare speak against that leader.

Well, there has certainly been violence. It hasn't been one-sided, though. Trump has at times seem to encourage it, which is blameworthy: but not in a while, and not this time.

Probably the leadership of both sides should consider the effect of their words, but not at the cost of ending even a raucous debate on these issues. The President is not a king, but primus inter pares. He has all the rights of free speech of any other citizen, even if he has the responsibility of remembering that more people are listening to him (and, even, that not all of those people are completely together).

Still, just as I would oppose a Lèse-majesté law that would protect a President from criticism, I would oppose a standard that would prevent the President from arguing with other citizens as an equal. He is an equal. Surely the most likely good to come from the Trump presidency is the reminder that the President is not our better.

I'll be happy to stand up for the ideal that Presidents should not wield police authority to suppress dissent, nor brownshirts either. But I don't think the President should be above criticism, nor above debating ordinary citizens as an equal. Not only does it benefit the union leadership to be drawn into a direct debate with a President, it benefits all of us not to think of the President as above such a debate. He's just a guy, no better than any of you. Maybe not as good as many of you! But he's an American, so he is in a sense our equal: and he'll be the President, so in a sense he'll be the first among equals. And that's all.

Here is a strangely sanguine article from American Thinker about microwave technology that could improve even on fracking production from shale formations. The author believes even environmentalists will like it, because it uses less water than fracking. I predict it won't be more than a few weeks before we start seeing articles complaining that microwaves trapped in the rock will produce earthquakes, autism, heteronormative bathrooms, and income inequality in affected counties.

John F. Kelly is the man who, asked by a reporter if he would consider the possibility that his forces would be defeated in Iraq, said: "Hell these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain't shit."

Saint Nicholas (Greek: Ἅγιος Νικόλαος, Hágios Nikólaos, Latin: Sanctus Nicolaus); (15 March 270 – 6 December 343), also called Nikolaos of Myra, was a historic 4th-century Christian saint and Greek Bishop of Myra, in Asia Minor (modern-day Demre, Turkey). Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker (Νικόλαος ὁ Θαυματουργός, Nikólaos ho Thaumaturgós). His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints, and his legendary habit of secret gift-giving gave rise to the traditional model of Santa Claus through Sinterklaas.

The historical Saint Nicholas is commemorated and revered among Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox Christians. In addition, some Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Reformed churches have been named in honor of Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers and students in various cities and countries around Europe.

The historical Saint Nicholas, as known from strict history: He was born at Patara, Lycia in Asia Minor (now Turkey). In his youth he made a pilgrimage to Egypt and the Palestine area. Shortly after his return he became Bishop of Myra and was later cast into prison during the persecution of Diocletian. He was released after the accession of Constantine and was present at the Council of Nicaea. In 1087, Italian merchants stole his body from Myra, bringing it to Bari in Italy.

Anything with rum (patron saint of sailors, you know), but the book recommends a rum toddy

A "St. Nicholas's Helper" of hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps

A Sankt Nikolai Abbey Tripel beer

A Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil wine

The traditional toast: "To the real Santa Claus, scourge of heretics and champion of the poor: May he help us defend the faith and assist the needy."

"Scourge of heretics"?

In 325, he was one of many bishops to answer the request of Constantine and appear at the First Council of Nicaea; the 151st attendee was listed as "Nicholas of Myra of Lycia". There, Nicholas was a staunch anti-Arian, defender of the Orthodox Christian position, and one of the bishops who signed the Nicene Creed. Tradition has it that he became so angry with the heretic Arius during the Council that he struck him in the face.

Speaking of people whose service earned them a space for having unpopular opinions, I came across this 2008 bit of mine citing the Rev. Mr. Wright. It was a rumination on what was, at that time, an open question about whether Obama was really more of a Chicago-way liberal, or more of a New Republic liberal.

At this juncture I would have to say that he proved to be a TNR liberal after all, but with numerous Chicago-way connections. We can see the evidence of the corruption and power worship in the IRS scandal, the misuse of the Department of Justice to protect friends and allies from investigations and prosecutions, and the abuse of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights to try to force a punitive form of 'social justice' on American campuses. His rise empowered those people, even if he was not fully one of them.

We can see the TNR aspect in the rest of it. The world is burning as he leaves office, and it is burning because of American weakness. Fuel for these fires came from his desire to fight a 'clean hands' war with drones and surgical strikes, his flight from Iraq, his refusal to stand up to his own red line in Syria, and his rush to give Iran everything it could ask in order to get any kind of a treaty. The Chinese have found him easy to push, so much so that America stands in some peril of watching the Philippines defect to their sphere. Russia is feeling expansive. All of this comes from the fact of weak hands.

A phobia is an irrational fear. In the wake of regular worldwide terrorist attacks in the name of numerous interpretations of Islam, it's hard to see how concerns about Islam and political power are any sort of "phobia." But let's accept for a moment that it can be possible to be unfairly concerned about a particular Muslim, even so.

That still leaves two questions:

1) At what point does a concern become valid? Vox defends Ellison against charges arising from his association with worse characters, especially Louis Farrakhan. What we have learned about radicalization indicates that much less close contact than this is necessary for it, though. Perhaps it's not fair to hold Ellison to blame for his associations, but there has to be a point at which it would be fair. At what point would it become fair? That's a question I'd like to have answered.

2) If we're to be excessively careful not to criticize individual Muslims for associations with others who may be more radical than they, why doesn't this point apply -- say -- to Hindus? Consider Tulsi Gabbard. Isn't she being treated exactly the same way, by the left, that they're concerned that Ellison is being treated by the right?

What's the difference? Gabbard is a Hindu, and she knows lots of other Hindus (and Indian Americans) who have inherited or developed concerns about Islam and/or Muslims. Ellison is a Muslim, and he knows lots of other Muslims (and African Americans) who have inherited or developed concerns about Judaism and/or Jews. These seem like parallel cases to me. So why promote Ellison to the leadership of the DNC, and run down Gabbard?

I suppose you could reverse the polarity on that question, and ask me why I'm more inclined to defend Gabbard. But I know why: because she's an Iraq War veteran. She's earned a space for considering her unpopular opinions, whatever they are. I don't have to agree with her every time to know we're on the same side when it counts. Ellison offers no such evidence of service that would counteract his associations.

I will always have a place in my heart for David Petraeus, who commanded the Surge and won back a chance for Iraq to succeed. However, while I can and do fault President Obama for his squandering of that chance, I don't fault him for his handling of the end of Petraeus' career. Both in his handling of classified information, and in his handling of his relationship with his wife, he showed himself to have fallen away from the standards and virtues that properly belong to those entrusted with the lives of Americans.

Now Christine Brim comes to suggest that he is really a Clintonite Democrat as well. Perhaps -- or perhaps he is just one of those generals, of whom there are many, for whom doing what the politicians want becomes a guiding star. If he looks like a Clintonite, it's only because he expected them to win and aligned himself accordingly.

Still, I'm afraid that it is best for David Petraeus to remain in retirement. With respect for the good that he did, this is not the hour to elevate someone to high position with his track record on handling classified information. That was a valid and good reason to avoid elevating Hillary Clinton to the Presidency, and it is just as good a reason not to make Petraeus a Secretary of State. That he also may have participate in other Clintonite scandals, such as the provision of false information on Benghazi, only underlines what is already adequately determined by that fact.

“The same people that voted for Trump ran into burning buildings and saved whoever.. no matter what color they were, no matter what religion and they would do it again tomorrow.... So, if you want to sit and tell me that those people are giving tacit approval to an exploitative system ― I say, 'OK, and would you put your life on the line for people who aren’t like you? Because they did.”

The Economist reports on a violation of the Constitution by the Federal government. Kudos to the Congressional committee for bringing it to light. Now let's see what they do with it.

Also, I note that this part seems to fit a pattern: "We have no idea as to the extent of the problem because the DEA did not keep records" of the program. Now why would a bureaucracy choose not to keep records of a program, if only to audit it and see how successful it was?

Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of State announced it had shut down a fake embassy in Ghana this summer with the help of local authorities... The criminals weren’t just in it for the adrenaline rush of processing consular paperwork, though. It was a lucrative enterprise that charged unknowing marks about $6,000 each for “fraudulently obtained, legitimate U.S. visas, counterfeit visas, false identification documents,” and other services, the State Department said.

It operated for about a decade in part because local authorities were paid to “look the other way,” the State Department said.... The fake embassy had an American flag flying out front and a photo of President Barack Obama and embassy signs inside. The criminal ring running the scam even advertised its services in neighboring Togo and Ivory Coast.

Did we really not know about this? None of our open-source intelligence people noticed the advertised access to American consular documents from a location that wasn't legitimate, not for ten years?

Or was the Obama administration happy to accept the additional semi-documented migrants? Are they just shutting this down now so that the Trump people won't look into it and realize they were letting it roll?

We must never forget that we are born equal, with basic, natural rights, including those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those rights are inherent in us because we are humans, not because they are granted by government. Government, indeed, exists primarily to protect those natural rights; the only legitimate power it has is that which we grant to it.

We can no longer assume that all Americans understand the origins of their rights and the importance of liberal democracy.

I've said little else in this space for more than a decade, but clearly that hasn't moved mountains.

Robert Liston was one of the greats of the pre-anesthesia age. In those days, surgery was best performed fast, as that minimized pain and made it more likely that patients would survive the procedure. But...

The assistants tried hard to hold [a thrashing patient] but, he was too strong. In that chaos, Liston started to move so fast that he accidently cut his assistant’s fingers off and also slashed a spectator’s coat.

The spectator thought that he was hurt and died of terror on the spot. The patient and the assistant died a few days later from infections of their wounds.

This is the only surgery in known history with a 300 percent mortality rate.

Environmentalists must fight alongside unions for full employment in a green economy that uses union labor. American steel produced by United Steelworkers members must be used to make wind turbines erected by Laborers members. Unfortunately, most green energy capitalists hold anti-union positions, but environmentalists have to demand a change.

Andy McCarthy is one of those hard-core right-wingers who regularly raises concerns about Islam's compatibility with Western values. So, let's hear him out on the question of whether or not President Trump needs a waiver from Congress to appoint Mad Dog Mattis as SECDEF.

It is true that the Constitution assigns the president the sole power to nominate and appoint officers of the United States. It is also true that the Senate’s power of advice-and-consent is the principal constitutional check on the president’s appointment power. (U.S. Const., art. II, sec. 2, cl. 2.) It does not necessarily follow, however, that Congress may not impose qualifications that any nominee must meet when the office in question has been created by Congress.

What are now the Department of Defense and the position of Secretary of Defense are creatures of statute. The 1940s-era statute to which Shannen refers as the source of the limitation on the president’s appointment power is the National Security Act of 1947. It is section 202 of that act that establishes the Secretary of Defense – the office, the qualifications to serve in it, and the attendant duties.

That doesn't sound like he's looking for a totalitarian leader to make him safe by imposing a fascist worldview and brooking no opposition. It sounds like he's thinking seriously about the constitutional separation of powers, and a due and proper role for Congress as well as the Executive.

Such are the terrifying creatures with which the Left now has to reckon.

I got interested in ideology, in a large part, because I got interested in what happened in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Cultural Revolution in China, and equivalent occurrences in other places in the world. Mostly I concentrated on Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. I was particularly interested in what led people to commit atrocities in service of their belief.... One of the things that I’m trying to convince my students of is that if they had been in Germany in the 1930s, they would have been Nazis. Everyone thinks “Not me,” and that’s not right. It was mostly ordinary people who committed the atrocities that characterized Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Well, but people learn from history, right? Does he have any good examples of a similar ideology that is crushing freedom and that his students are rushing to embrace?

Yes, he does.

The university has told me that that every time I insist that I won’t use those [gender neutral] pronouns [like 'xe' and 'xir'], the probability that I’ll be teaching in January decreases.... My opponents say ‘you’re just scare-mongering. We don’t really have that much power.’ Then why change the criminal code? Why put the hate speech amendments in there? The final word in law is incarceration.

There is no question about this. When I made the video on September 27th, and I said, ‘probably making this video itself is illegal’. Not only that, the university is as responsible as I am for making it, because that’s in the human rights code. The university read the damned policies and had their lawyers scour it, and concluded exactly what I concluded. That’s why they sent me two warning letters.

No free speech, no free expression, no free association, and no earning a living if you deviate from the imposed speech codes. Your employer is on the hook for you, so they can't afford to employ you if you won't comply.

This is where they were trying to go here, too. McArdle was just talking about that.

“Sure, the government won’t actually shut your church down. But the left will use its positions of institutional power to try to hound anyone who attends that church from public life. You can believe whatever you want -- but if we catch you, or if we even catch you in proximity to people who believe it, we will threaten your livelihood.”

I’ve heard from a number of evangelicals who, despite their reservations about the man, ended up voting for Donald Trump because they fear that the left is out to build a world where it will not be possible to hold any prominent job while holding onto their church’s beliefs about sexuality. Discussions I’ve had in recent days with nice, well-meaning progressives suggest that this is not a paranoid fantasy.

Politics are about shared values as much as they're about anything else. As the author points out, California is completely out of step with the country, and provided Hillary Clinton with 100% of her margin of victory in the popular vote.

Of course, if we could agree to abide by the 10th Amendment there'd be no reason California should have to leave. They could live by their own values in perfect accord with their nearby neighbors' living in accordance with more traditional values.

Yet in the wake of Trump's election, I have seen no signs at all of any softening of the idea that the Federal Government Should Rule All. I have seen calls to abolish the electoral college, calls that are completely removed from the reality that Democrats now control none of the capacities that would enable them to amend the Constitution. I have seen calls to abolish the states, even though state governments like California's (and there are less than a handful of such states) provide Democrats with their only practical shelter against whatever Trump's Federal government may do.

If I were inclined to view political disagreements in medical terms, I would think this pathological. This insistence on imposing one-size-fits-all solutions on a big and diverse nation is what lost them all of those state governments. It's a major contributing factor to what lost them this Presidential election. It's also lost them a bunch of House and Senate seats. Yet they continue to double down on the strategy, determined to knock down all remaining laws between them and a fully centralized power. They do this without apparently realizing that these are load-bearing walls, and the power will be centralized like a roof being brought down on their heads.

So yes, by all means, let them go. I will gladly support any Constitutional convention or amendment aimed at freeing California to pursue its own destiny. We would all be happier, and our politics would be healthier, if we could make this happen.

Apparently we're not making this up: a city attorney in Philadelphia, clad in a blazer and ascot and carrying a glass of wine, tagged a fancy grocery store with the message "F**K TRUMP." I mean, really, he doesn't seem to be a paid plant or anything, and it's not part of a Jimmy Kimmel video or an SNL skit.

Elie Mystal, who writes the almost equally absurd and pathetic blog "Above the Law," also is skating right out at the edge, in a cri de coeur that's located almost entirely in self-loathing and -mockery territory, without quite achieving self-awareness:

When Duncan Lloyd vandalizes your city, it’s part of his larger campaign of finding a way to crawl out from under his covers in the morning. . . . He just wants to be able to look his cats in the eye without feeling ineffectual and ashamed. “I made a statement today, Odysseus and Penelope. I’m not going to let this be normalized.”

I know, you think I lifted that from an alt-right site engaging in a scathing satire. I really didn't.

I have to assume that Progressive America has more effective minions than this, perhaps flying under the radar for now, but sometimes you truly have to wonder.

H/t Maggie's Farm, the MSM "pouts about lost norms" (so many links popped up I couldn't begin to include them all), when what's really bugging it is a lost leverage:

Imagine this … we now live in a world where the media has zero leverage. They can't blackmail Trump into behaving a certain way because 1) they have nothing he needs -- to reach the people, he can easily go around them; and 2) they can't put pressure on him by hammering him with coordinated narratives because they have lost all moral authority with the public. Nothing they say matters. Nothing they do moves the needle.

Sure, there could be a downside here. If the Trump administration gets wrapped up in a legitimate scandal, we might not listen to eunuchs who cried "disqualified" thousands of times already. But to me, that's like lamenting the lack of trains running on time after the death of a dictator. Whatever downside that comes will be well worth the defeat of outright evil.

The Democratic negotiating position on all issues put before them while they are in the House and Senate minority for at least the next two years should be very simple: You will give us Merrick Garland or you may go die in a fire.

Not only that, but they should do what they should have done the day Antonin Scalia died: Make it clear that the next time the Democrats control the Senate while the Republican Party controls the presidency, whether that is in 2019 or 2049, there will be an extraordinarily high price to pay for what just transpired. The next Republican president facing divided government will get nothing. This president will run the entire federal government by himself. Zero confirmations. No judges, not even to the lowliest district court in the country. No Cabinet heads. No laws. Budgets will be approved only after prolonged and painful crises. Whoever this GOP president is, he or she will be forced to watch while their presidency and everything they hoped to achieve in government is burned down while the Democrats block the fire hydrant and laugh.

And Democrats should be confident knowing that American voters will never, ever hold them accountable for it. On the contrary, they will almost certainly be rewarded with sweeping power.

This is apparently what Democrats need to do now that they've learned that magnanimity doesn't work. Well, as Dennis Miller says, keep it up. People love this stuff.

You may recall that last year the Virginia governor had a brief fit of gun-controllery, in which he declined to recognize the permits of very many states. That was fixed. Now, the honorable and glorious Virginia Citizens Defense League -- long may their fame endure -- has convinced the state to recognize the permits of all other states that grant permits to carry.

Under Georgia law, we recognize the permits of any state that recognizes our permit. Or so the plain text of the law says. Our Attorney General has elected to refuse to recognize Virginia permits.

Now, having had both sorts, I can tell you that this is silliness of the extreme sort. Not only does Virginia require all the background checks that Georgia requires, it also requires a proficiency examination equivalent to at least a basic NRA-certified course in firearms. The Virginia permit holders are, in other words, by statute better qualified than our native ones are required to be.

The matter has come to court. VCDL, and the Georgia Packing group, are set against the state government. If they do not win their case, they must nevertheless win the point. These Republican politicians in Georgia at the state level are dogs, but we'll teach them yet.